Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Digest:Eps. 397 & 398: Spotting Meteors & Mars Rocks
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- The best time to view meteors is generally after midnight on a clear, moonless night. You will see many more meteors in a rural area than under city lights. On nights not during a meteor shower, you may expect to view sporadic meteors at the rate of between 2 and 16 per hour.
- Chemical analysis of samples of the Tissint meteor suggest that it was ejected from Mars about a million years ago and traveled about the Sun for the subsequent period of time before falling to Earth in 2011. The 2011 fall is particularly significant because these samples are very fresh having been on the ground for only a few months in the dry Moroccan desert.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
397 – Spotting Meteors
Meteors, shooting stars, or falling stars are different names for the streaks of light in the night sky which are in reality the dying embers of tiny asteroids. These small interplanetary travelers were speeding along at between 7 and 44 miles per second when they entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In space, they are called meteoroids and typically ranged in size from that of a grain of sand to perhaps ones as big as of a piece of driveway gravel. Large space pebbles can produce fireballs which are brighter than the planet Venus. Most meteors burn up 50-70 miles above you, however, a very few of them produce fragments which fall to the Earth’s surface. In rare occasions meteor observers are able to walk up to such a fallen space rock which is called a fall.
The best time to view meteors is generally after midnight on a clear, moonless night. You will see many more meteors in a rural area than under city lights. On nights not during a meteor shower, you may expect to view sporadic meteors at the rate of between 2 and 16 per hour. Some meteor showers produce more than 100 events per hour. Rarely you will have a chance to view a meteor storm which will give you the feeling that you are seeing the Earth move through space. In 1966 one of these storms produced a WOW inspiring 40 meteors per second.
During the year, there are a dozen major meteor showers. Check out the International Meteor Organization Calendar for a complete listing of the dates of meteor showers as well as how bright the moon will be on those dates. Happy viewing.
398 – Mars Rocks
At about 2AM on July 18, 2011 several people in near Tata, Morocco saw a bright fireball which was described by one of them to be initially yellow, then turned green, and finally exploded into several pieces producing two sonic booms. In October of 2011 desert wandering nomads began finding very fresh looking dark fusion-crusted stones which were radioactively dated by Dr. John Duke of the University of Alberta to be less than 5 years old. In total 15-24 lbs of meteorites consistent with a very recent fall were found in a strewn field, were whisk away to receive high prices from collectors, and named after the town of Tissint [tee.seent] about 30 miles from their discovery location.
Chemical analysis of samples of the Tissint meteor suggest that it was ejected from Mars about a million years ago and traveled about the Sun for the subsequent period of time before falling to Earth in 2011. The 2011 fall is particularly significant because these samples are very fresh having been on the ground for only a few months in the dry Moroccan desert. They are relatively uncontaminated by the terrestrial environment and the best we have before a Martian sample and return mission.
Currently a tiny piece of the Tissint meteorite the mass of dime is selling for more than $2,000. It is likely that there are some Martian meteorites amongst the rocks in the American southwest deserts awaiting discovery. They could be worth 10 times or more their weight in gold.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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